Free The Braided World by Kay Kenyon Page B

fast she latched onto his arm. “Don't be stupid, Anton. This is their custom. Don't be stupid.”
    Pulling away from her, he walked over to Vidori. He bent in toward the king, talking rapidly, and the king nodded, smiling. He wasn't listening, his attention focused on the basket. The girl was to be
clipped
, as they called it. Having reached adolescence, she had been revealed by hermenses as born to bear. A hoda. A slave, from this time forward.
    It was terrible, no doubt. But, after all, this was Dassa culture; you couldn't go barging in, imposing your own values. Anton was having words with the king, the young fool—and doing so
publicly
… It was so hot standing on the stone plaza. Sweat collected under her hatband, and her face seemed washed with a scrim of fire. The scene grew wobbly before her: young girl, wire basket, terror in the eyes. The judipon official raised his hand toward the device on the girl's head.
    The girl's too young
, Bailey thought, irrelevantly.
    In the next moment, the old man slammed his fist down on a protruding flange—a little blade embedded in the cage. Bailey felt her own tongue convulse, her eyes flinching from the basket. For a moment the girl stood immobile as blood sluiced out of the wire mesh. Then she crumpled, pitching forward into the mud. The noblewoman watched her fall. It was the
mother
, Shim had said. Then the woman turned and left, payment in hand.
    Bailey took off her hat, waving it in front of her face, but she was just stirring the hot air and it didn't help. She looked at the old man who had done the clipping.
If you figure out a penance
, she thought,
let me know.
    Meanwhile, the judipon was tending to the girl, removing the hood, inserting a pad to absorb the bleeding, wiping the mud from her face. It was almost tender, how he cleansed the face of this girl he had just mutilated. The girl moaned, and he made shushing sounds, as though consoling a child.
    Anton was at Bailey's side again, still looking at the girl, who was stirring on the ground, a strange noise coming from her throat, like a moan she tried to conceal. “Such a peaceful people,” Anton muttered.
    Nick had joined them. “God,” he said, “they cut off her tongue.”
    “I couldn't stop him,” Anton said. “He wouldn't listen.”
    Shim approached them. “The king will resume his walk,” she reported cheerfully.
    “We are unable to accompany him,” Anton said.
    At Shim's confused look, Bailey hastened to add, “The sun,” wiping her brow. ‘Anton will help me into the shade.”
    Several hoda were now assisting the injured girl to stand. Her sandals made two tracks in the mud as they half dragged her from the plaza. Left behind was the judipon, who stood holding the wire basket as though he were on his way to market.
    To Shim, Anton said, “By your pardon, we will return to our quarters.” He took Bailey's arm.
    “Because of the heat,” Bailey said, trying, still, to teach Anton a bit of diplomacy.
    “Because of the blood,” Anton said, and led her away, accompanied by Nick.
    Oh, he was so young, not to understand that sometimes blood was the way of the world. Sometimes blood happened. And in those cases, you must make the best of it, because the world was not—would never be—a nice, safe place. It was because of these things that penance was so very necessary.
    The king had turned to watch them leave.
    Shim was left standing there to decide what to tell Vidori, whether it was the sun or the blood that drove them from the plaza.
    “Lower your voices,” Anton said. They'd just got back from the plaza, and now contained their conversation until they pulled the screen door shut.
    Nick paced in the confines of their largest room, while Zhen continued her work in the corner, painstaking analyses of everything she could get her hands on, using her limited liquid spectroscopy tools. Thus engaged, she was only marginally watching the uproar. Bailey sat on the floor cross-legged, tucking